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A man helping young air cadets sell poppies in Hamilton suffered “life-altering” injuries after an alleged assault by a 12-year-old boy and a 48-year-old woman, Hamilton police say.
The man, 59, is a commanding officer for the Royal Canadian Air Cadets and was supervising the selling of Remembrance Day poppies on Sunday when two boys approached them and “blew a loud air horn directly into [the young cadets’] ears,” police said in a release on Monday.
They were outside a restaurant at The Centre on Barton, near Barton and Ottawa streets, at about 1:45 p.m. on Sunday. The man followed the boys into the restaurant “to confront them about their actions,” police said on Monday.
According to police, “a struggle ensued” and a woman who was not initially involved started assisting the boys and assaulted the victim, causing him to fall.
One of the boys hit the victim “several times,” police said, before leaving the scene. The woman also left before police arrived.
Police said when officers arrived, the man was suffering from serious injuries, which paramedics attended to before taking him to hospital.
The 12-year-old boy was arrested and charged with aggravated assault and assault level one. Police found him and the other boy later that day after reports of “a new, unrelated disturbance.”
The second boy was not arrested, police say “as officers were able to see footage of the incident and determined his role/actions.”
The woman was arrested Monday morning and charged with aggravated assault.
‘Unsettling’ seeing kids so young involved in assault
Veronica Formosa, who says she saw the aftermath of the incident, was arriving at the Mandarin restaurant at the Centre on Barton when she saw two kids running from the restaurant to Boston Pizza next door.
When she went inside the Mandarin, a hostess at the restaurant told her she couldn’t be seated due to an “incident that involved a man and some youths fighting.” People at the restaurant were telling her what happened when the same two kids ran back into the Mandarin and left shortly after.
Formosa said she later saw the man, who seemed to be wearing military-style clothing, being cared for by paramedics.
Formosa said the boys looked “really young.”
“And to be involved in something like this, that’s unsettling,” she said.
